I’ve had enough of the Jungle and head to the exit. The last man I speak to is an Afghan who runs one of the restaurants on ‘main street’. He’s trying to convince me to come in on my way out, but I have to get back to Calais to catch my train to Paris. ‘You are too smiley to be French’ he teases, and when I say I’m from Australia he begins chattering away excitedly. He knows someone on Manus Island, and he has a lot of questions of the non-rhetorical kind.

My heart sinks to my feet and I want to run and hide and vomit. I thought about the possibility of this happening when I left for Athens, but assured myself the numbers were so large the chance of it occurring was miniscule. There are over a million refugees entering Europe this year alone, and only a few thousand that have tried to get to Australia, what are the chances? Yet here I am, literally about to escape the jungle myself when it happens. It’s all very well and good to have long debates about this with volunteers and workers in cafes after a shit day, but I don’t want to stand here and explain my country’s wicked policy to this man who has nothing and knows someone who is directly suffering from it. Why didn’t I say I was a Kiwi. I seriously consider feigning ignorance and just telling him about my neighbour who came from Afghanistan in the 80s and loves Australia and says he’s never had any problems. But I’ve clearly stood there like a mute idiot for too long because he can tell I know what he’s asking about.

Yes, it’s true they can’t leave I say. Yes, it’s true that PNG is not processing their claims even though they’ve been submitted. Yes, it’s true that the Australian government funds the whole thing. Yes, the navy does physically tow them out to sea. Yes, it’s true that people have died, some because they were denied medical care. He tells me his friend said the food was inedible and the guards beat them, then gestures to his restaurant and laughs, ‘at least we make good food!’. Thankfully there are some questions I genuinely don’t have a firm answer to, like if it’s as dirty as the Jungle, or if people have access to better services. Though all reports would suggest the answers to those questions are yes and no, I’m not lying when I say I haven’t seen it. Thank Christ. I’ve been struggling enough with the Jungle in France, I don’t think my soul could handle Australian supported gulags.

The man thanks me earnestly and I’m very confused as to why. ‘You explain me, here is not the worst’ he says. And I realise I’ve given him a gift. The gift that somewhere on a pacific island in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by real jungle, there are people who are treated even more poorly than him. People who are worse off and less human. People who also live in the mud and swamp but are imprisoned. This man, at least, has his agency. He can walk out the door if he wants. What a way to help someone. Maybe I’ll go and find Mimi and tell her about the Somali woman we allowed to be raped, denied immediate emergency health care to, and then flew around the pacific like a ping pong ball so she couldn’t access the courts.

When I get to the exit near the Banksy the mood in the camp has quickly turned and suddenly 7 police vans screech around the corner, riot police pour out and sprint to the other side of the Jungle. There are yells and the police have their batons raised as they run. People shrink into their restaurants and tents and huts and everything goes weirdly quiet. I try and find out what’s going on, but the response I get seems to suggest that this is a relatively regular occurrence; it could be something as simple as an argument that triggers such a reaction.

I can’t wait to get away from this place. A cop stops me and asks if I’ve been taking photos and I lie and say I don’t have a camera. I don’t know why I lie; there are no photos of police on my phone or anything that is controversial. I just don’t want to do what he wants. It’s the only ‘piss off’ I can give them. As I walk onto the freeway to hitch a ride back to Calais I pull down my hoodie even though it’s raining and cold. I’m scared that unless people see my blonde hair and white skin, no one will stop to help me.

There are teenage boys everywhere. I’m told a story of 13 and 14 yr old brothers who travelled from Kurdistan. They were with their 21 year old brother who managed to get to England two months ago. Now they have no one and have attached themselves to a male volunteer who doesn’t look much older than 21 himself. A child’s right to education is in the International Bill of Human Rights, the Refugee Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It’s also French and British national law. But the children here do not go to school. Instead they sit here every day in the dirt, sometimes kicking a football around, dreaming of England. If they weren’t traumatised and destroyed before they got here, they certainly will be once they leave.

To counter this, l’auberge des migrants has set up a women’s centre and safe space for kids and their mums to come. Because the teenage boys kept drifting in they also set up a caravan across the road for adolescent males where they can hang out, talk to other guys, and when I see them, breakdance. I meet one British woman called Alice who has started a community centre with her own money and serves 400 hot meals a day. She recently burned through her savings and had to start a crowd funding page. I can’t hide my horror when she tells me she sleeps here. I would not be in this place alone after dark. Every week she allows a Narcotics Anonymous meeting to take place in what is essentially her bedroom. She tells me that opium and heroin are big problems here, and they are trying to give people some support. I guess it’s no surprise that in such a place people turn to drugs, but it’s incredible the amount that is smuggled in here. I’m told that most of it comes from England. More people profiting from refugees misery.

There are several pregnant women. Mimi from Eritrea is 8.5 months along. She lives in one of the huts built by l’auberge des migrants, a small shack where thin wooden boards are nailed together, but better than a flimsy tent. It’s amazing how tidy she keeps it, all shoes are left outside and inside feels very comfortable, kind of like a blanket fort you’d make as a kid. Thanks to l’auberge des migrants there are no longer any women with kids living in tents, they have all been built one of these makeshift cabins that have pitiful looking padlocks on the door. It’s not much, but it’s a space to call their own. Mimi invites us in and offers us tea and food, and tells me how two and a half months ago her husband left and is now in England. She is desperate to get there. I cannot hide the outrage on my face as she tells us they don’t talk on the phone because it is too hard for him to hear about the Jungle. We sit in her tiny room in the dark and the helplessness in her face as she pleads with us to find her a way to Britain is painful. I try and convince her to stay in France and claim asylum here, but she is not interested. Many refugees tell me they fear the French will be unwelcoming and are more likely to be racist than the British. I am not so sure about this. They also worry about how long it will take to learn the language, though considering some have been in the Jungle for a year this seems misguided. Mimi tells me she is expecting to give birth here. On the floor of her shack, unless of course she goes into labour outside in the mud. I open my mouth to reassure her that there’s no way the authorities would let her have a baby here and someone will get her to a hospital, but I stop. I’m not so sure about anything anymore.

I meet two more of Mimi’s friends, also alone and from Eritrea, one of them is also 7.5 months pregnant. I am so surprised by how strongly they are opposed to seeking asylum in France. They treat me with suspicion for even suggesting it and one of them shuts down and just doesn’t want to talk anymore. It’s amazing to me that they have such a rose coloured view of how life will be in England. I don’t get how they can think that having to learn French or go through the asylum process here would be worse than living in this breeding ground of misery. Another thing I’m noticing is that people are less open. In Greece and the Balkans everyone wanted to talk, but in the Jungle residents are so used to journalists coming and asking about their history. At first people were hopeful that telling their stories would result in governments actually doing something, but it has been so long now that they see no point in sharing their pain. They’ve lost all faith that anyone will help.

I say goodbye to Mimi and her friends. Though her little home did offer some shelter from the hideous weather outside, it was beginning to get a bit awkward with me sitting there and no one talking. Almost immediately I regret the decision. There is depression and horror everywhere. Anytime a car pulls up refugees crowd around asking for food or clothes or blankets and are yelled at to keep in line. It resembles cattle being herded. Sometimes the nervousness becomes aggressive, though I don’t see anyone get physical. People are much more desperate here than further south. It’s also a lot colder and no one seems to be looking forward to the future. One man pulls me over and asks where I’m from. He then gets excited and pulls out his phone to tell me his nephew is in Melbourne, and have I met him? And can I help him to get there? I wouldn’t have thought I’d be telling anyone the better option to anything was to stay in the Jungle, but if Manus is anything like this and people are locked in…. Maybe there’s always a worse place, I just wish it wasn’t run by my government.

There is a huge police presence. Saturday was pretty calm, but I’m told that the cops regularly come in here with tear gas, even using it on women and children. Police brutality seems to be a big problem and adds to everyone’s anxiety; the refugees, workers and volunteers. I know it’s naive to think of police as protectors, but here they are regarded by everyone as the aggressors. Complaints have been made to the local station but are dismissed; one guy tells me he was laughed out when he went in to protest about them using tear gas on children. Around the corner from the jungle are a dozen vans full of riot police, just in case. Just in case of what I’m not sure. Certainly not what police are supposed to do. I hear of three different murders that have taken place, and a few cases of sexual assault, none of which have been thoroughly investigated by the police. Why bother, these people aren’t really human and resources are obviously better spent gassing them into submissive terror.

When I got back into town I was in a bit of a daze. I went and got a hot chocolate to fix everything and the very cheery woman who made me the most amazing one ever asked me if I was ok. But I didn’t want to tell her what was wrong in case she turned out to be a racist Front National loon and I’d be obligated to hate her and couldn’t come back for another chocolat tomorrow. There are posters everywhere of the candidates for the Sunday election, and I am pleased to see that most of the Le Pen ones have been defaced. Calais has a weird feel to it. When you’re in the centre you would have no idea that the Jungle was only 4kms away. There are Christmas decorations and music everywhere, and I wonder how many locals have actually visited the camp and know what it’s really like. When you mention the place to anyone you get a mixture of sympathetic tuts and distasteful expressions. The owner of my hotel was not impressed when I asked him for directions. Certainly people did not on the whole react in a similar manner to what I heard in Greece or the Balkans, though given the sheer scope of the Jungle situation perhaps that’s an unfair comparison.

I generally don’t tend to head north at this time of year, at most times of year for that matter, and thankfully for my vitamin d levels in less than two weeks I’ll be on a beach in Sydney and temperatures in single digits will seem like a distant memory. But right now I’m on a train heading to northern France, where the forecast is predicted to be rain, cold and wind, three things that I hate. And I’m heading to a place that is so unappealing its been nicknamed ‘La Jungle’.

The Jungle actually refers to several squatter camps that have sprung up around the northern French town of Calais, where the Eurostar tunnel takes travellers across the channel to England. While refugees have gathered here for years trying to jump trucks, trains, cars or ferries to get to the UK, in the past year numbers have substantially increased and there are now thousands of people. Some have lost their lives in attempts to get to Britain, many have been injured by trying or from police brutality, one man managed to walk the length of the Eurotunnel before being apprehended by police at the other end. Many do not speak French, some have family in Britain, and others simply think they have a better chance at a life there than in Europe, but generally refugees stay here for a long time. While some have managed to get to England, most languish in tents in the mud. Conditions are atrocious, and by all accounts the camps resemble townships. In what appears to be a pattern I’ve seen everywhere from Lesvos to Skopje, governments do not want to acknowledge the full extent of this problem and provide the infrastructure and humanitarian services so desperately needed through fear of giving the situation any element of permanency and losing votes.

Such an approach has failed. Coinciding with my weekend is the second round of the French regional elections, where Marine Le Pen, France’s terrifying duplicate of Pauline Hanson or Donald Trump, is poised to win the first region ever for her far right-wing party the Front National. What is amazing to me is how many people in the previously socialist north seem to be voting for Le Pen as a protest vote. Though as someone who comes from a country that elected a buffoon because a politician changed her mind about a carbon price that the majority of the world is now advocating, this probably shouldn’t be such a surprise. I guess I had more faith in the intelligence of the French, and hopefully they end up proving that faith justified. If not however, and Le Pen wins and takes control of a region, she has promised to do whatever it takes to get the ‘migrants’ out of Calais, and one can only fear to what extent that means she is willing to go.

I’ve spent a lot of time since starting this project obsessing over how governments and people can be so dismissive of refugee’s human rights. Rights that we are all internationally recognised to possess for no other reason than the fact that we are human. You’re not entitled to them because you’re white, rich, male, Christian, straight or born in the west. You’re entitled to them because you are a human being. And it’s dawned on me that the reason some can be comfortable with this is because for many these people are not considered human. While it’s easy to argue that refugees are different, the ‘other’, or even a threat, such arguments don’t justify denying them human rights. It’s harder to get your head around the fact that for so many they are just not people, and this allows us to treat them accordingly. It’s the type of thinking that allows Israel to dismiss war crime accusations for the indiscriminate bombing of Palestinian civilians. It’s the type of thinking that allows the majority of the Australian population to not even blink while the government locks up desperate innocent people on remote pacific islands and denies them the most basic of fundamental freedoms. And it’s this type of thinking that allows France to treat the people in the jungle as an inconvenience rather than people screaming out for help and dignity.

But, however much we may choose to ignore it, these people are human beings. Believing otherwise may make it easier for you, but it doesn’t make it any less of a fact. They are the same species as you and your children. They catch the same diseases. Their bodies function in the same way. They have the same physical, civil and social needs. They could be your kidney, blood or bone marrow donors. A brilliant Banksy that popped up today emphasised the reality that this could be any of us. If you believe that you are entitled to human rights, and most people do, you cannot simultaneously support the deprivation of them for someone else because they are poorer, darker or less fortunate than you.

It’s now been almost a month since I left Serbia and in some ways the world is a different place, particularly my world. There are more military personnel in Paris then I care to see in the city I live, I’ve been patted down before walking into a big store, it takes an absurd amount of time to get into the building at work, and for several weeks any noise on the metro made people jump. Travelling with the refugees through the Balkans gave me a unique perspective after the attacks happened. When Macedonia announced it wouldn’t let through anyone who wasn’t from Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan, I was relieved that ‘my friends‘ had got through when they did. When US governors and a certain presidential candidate started calling for a halt on any humanitarian intake from Syria I was filled with a rage more violent than it would have been 6 weeks ago. And as each country along the way started to build a fence, I wanted to be there to see what it would look like and how it would feel now, with a very physical barrier to increase the terror, isolation and loneliness these people are already dealing with. To increase the sense that no one wants them.

Many people asked me why I didn’t take more photos, or even video footage. It’s important to remember that these people are refugees, which by definition means that they are fleeing persecution, and most likely do not want their identity to be revealed to authorities back home before they have found safety and a durable solution. In Syria there have even been stories of Assad’s government identifying individuals on social media and raiding their property, or worse, punishing loved ones they have left behind. To add to this, many journalists operating in the field have acted unethically in the taking of photos, particularly of children. I witnessed myself on Lesvos questionable media practices. It goes without saying that permission should always be sought before a photo is taken, and from parents if the subject is a minor. But even in these cases a personal judgement must be made as to whether this is the right thing to do. While photos have played a powerful role in this crisis, they can do so without the exploitation of grief, the invasion of privacy or putting refugees and their families at risk.

Thank you all again for your support, so many people responded to my call for clothes and put me in contact with people they knew who have helped at the Jungle. Many have asked me about visiting themselves. The following pages contain very useful information on the situation in Calais and how you can help;http://www.calaidipedia.co.uk/https://calaismigrantsolidarity.wordpress.com

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Forever intrepid gypsy at heart. Lover of pasta, the ocean, yoga and red wine. Believer in human rights, international law and justice. Can't sing, spell or cook. Terrified of snakes and diets. Views are my own.